Fourth
by zedille
Summary: Two families, four children. Two are traitors, two are dead, one is imprisoned, and the last is alone: Briar Cudgeon's little sister faces the ghosts of her childhood.


Disclaimer: I am not Eoin Colfer, I do not own Artemis Fowl, I do not make any profit from this.

A/N: SPOILERS FOR THE ARTEMIS FOWL FILES, short story _LEPrecon_ and _Artemis Fowl_ books 1-4.

The idea came to me suddenly. I liked the concept and wrote it. Now Síase keeps trying to appear in more fic. The dinner scene will be written sometime, as well as (hopefully) the fic detailing Root and Vinyáya's adventures with Turnball.

This story wandered very far away from where it was going originally. It'll be reworked some other day.

A thank you to **Nellie** and **Dooki** (don't ask) for reading, commenting, and supporting me all through the night as I wrote this. **Dooki**, the HIDDEN CHILDREN are for you. **Nellie**, don't ask.

Summary: Two families, four children. Two are traitors, two are dead, one is imprisoned, and the last is alone: Briar Cudgeon's little sister faces the ghosts of her childhood.

* * *

My name is Síase. Síase Cudgeon.

Yes, _that_ Cudgeon. Briar is—was—my brother. I don't talk about it much. He is a traitor to the People. He tried to overthrow the Council. He was involved in the goblin rebellion. He is universally despised; everyone hates him.

And he is dead.

With him died the family reputation, the family name. Our parents had died of Spelltropy during the height of the epidemic, so it was just Briar and me left. When he turned traitor and died, only I remained of the once-great Cudgeon family. Little Síase, the youngest. Always overshadowed by the mighty Lieutenant Commander Cudgeon, head of LEPRetrieval One. How am I supposed to undo the damage he did?

We're not the Roots. I am no Julius. Turnball was a traitor, too—or he would have been, had Julius not stopped him. And because Julius stopped him, because Julius then went on to a career that far outshone Turnball's (even Briar's), the stain on the family reputation has been wiped away, forgotten. The Root family name is now associated with Julius Root: Julius Root, the youngest full Commander in LEP history, the brilliant leader that guided the LEP through many crises. Julius Root, Vinyáya's favorite and Holly Short's patron.

Julius Root, who is now dead.

Of the four of us who grew up together—Turnball, Julius, Briar and I—three were LEP, of which two are traitors, two are dead, and the third might as well be.

When we were growing up together, who would have thought it would come to this? We thought we would go far in life, as we sat outside after dinner and had idle conversation over my mother's nettle smoothies. The three of them always knew they wanted to be LEP. I know now that only Root wanted to be LEP simply for the sake of helping the People; both our brothers viewed the LEP as only a stepping stone to bigger and grander things (the Council. Power.) My dreams weren't so grand; of course, growing up with the Roots, an old LEP family, I wanted to be LEP as well. In the end, (like how many other girls, I wonder?) I settled for less. I would be a famous artist, I decided. Julius would be the LEP commander (he and Briar used to argue with each other about who would be LEP commander. Nobody knew how their petty rivalry would end in, with their friendship ruined.) and we would be married. The Root and Cudgeon families, close ever since Briar and Julius had met and become best friends, would finally be formally united.

All dreams end, of course. My world shattered the day I learned what Turnball had done. Julius, still in shock at his brother's betrayal, brought home a pretty elf on his arm. Liana Vinyáya, daughter of Lord Vinyáya: beautiful, witty, charming, and polite. He wouldn't tell us then how (such a person as) he had met her, but I—and our parents—could tell that there was something there between them. We were nice. We didn't say anything about the irony that a boy from a good LEP family would pick a girl from an old smuggling family.

How could I compete with her? Not, by that time, that I really wanted to anymore—my crush had faded away years ago (don't all little sisters have crushes on their older brother's best friend?) but the death of a long-held childhood fantasy, however silly, still hurts. I knew that he was unlikely to ever marry anyone, much less little me, his best friend's annoying little sister who followed them around all the time.

He never did marry. Neither of the Roots ever did. Turnball was far more popular with the ladies than Julius was; he knew how to charm them, was willing to play the game of courtship and innuendo, of flattery and seduction. Julius, on the other hand, was more down-to-earth, embarrassingly blunt. He couldn't spin the web of gentle lies that Turnball could, and Briar was his best friend. Who would pay attention to him when Briar—charismatic, popular Briar—was always with him? Julius had a rather unsuccessful dating life. Girls never paid attention to him because Briar was so much more interesting—why deal with boring, dull Julius Root when handsome Briar, clever Briar, witty and entertaining and amusing Briar was there too? The few times Julius truly _needed_ an escort to avoid suffering complete social humiliation, he ended up asking me in desperation—at least he knew that I would always agree to go. He, unlike Briar, agonized over this sort of thing—Briar (and Turnball before him) had girls begging to go with him.

Briar and Turnball were very similar. Turnball was Briar's role model (another of those connections between the Root and Cudgeon families). Briar ended up married to a pretty socialite, Lila. Turnball would have ended up similarly, I'm sure, if he hadn't ended up a fugitive. Girls may prefer bad boys, but there is a limit to how far that will go, and it is difficult to live a luxurious life and stay on top of the latest gossip and fashions when one is on the run.

Julius never married; he never had any children, either. It is popular legend that he and Vinyáya were involved at some point, though if they did indeed have an affair they were amazingly discreet, for there never was any concrete evidence that they were every anything but very good friends and often political allies. She did take a suspiciously long vacation once (long enough to bear a child), but what with the Vinyáya family's habit of adopting orphans, no one ever knew if she had in fact been pregnant or not. She was lucky in that it is difficult to imagine the Wing Commander, talented and dedicated, as a mother.

Vinyáya's hypothetical child would be raised as a Vinyáya, anyway. There will be no more children with the Root name. Nor will there be any more with the Cudgeon name. After Briar was demoted in the wake of the first Fowl affair, Lila divorced him and took their children with her; they bear _her_ name now. The children no longer recognize me as a blood aunt (but though they no longer share my name, I still share their blood. The blood of their father is the blood of my brother. You can deny names but never blood…)

I am the last of two families. Of the four of us who once sat together and wove dreams of the future together, only one accomplished his dreams.

Briar and Julius are dead. Turnball is in jail. And I?

I might as well be dead, too.


End file.
